Assessing Pace of 2014 General Assembly

The Kentucky general assembly is about a third of the way through the 2014 session. As is the case in most Kentucky legislative sessions, a great deal of the voting comes in the later weeks and days. For instance, no votes occurred in either house Friday morning and both the House and Senate were in session for less than an hour.

Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer says his chamber tends to move at a slower pace, “If you go back and look at the formation of our country, I believe it was Ben Franklin who said that the House is like legislation that comes out as hot as coffee and the Senate is the saucer on which it cools. So, we are contemplative and more deliberative in our approach than the House of Representatives,” said Thayer.The pace of the legislative session is pretty typical for the first third of the session. Franklin County Senator Julian Carrol says the majority party sets the agenda when it comes to bill consideration. “In terms of their leadership, they want to make certain they don’t want to put them into a spot of having to vote on a bill that be of some harm to then in their effort for re-election, but we’ve moved too slow. We’ve got an enormous amount of work to do and certainly the pace should have been much better,” said Carrol.

Thayer says the senate may vote Monday on legislation aimed at doing away with the state treasurer’s office. He says it’s legislation working to save taxpayers’ money.